Some marginal gains made on opioid front
LIKE many states, Oklahoma has a long way to go to curb its opioid problem. However, a report last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides a small dose of good news.
In the report issued Thursday, the CDC found that 32 of Oklahoma’s 77 counties, including Oklahoma County, saw decreases in the number of opioids prescribed from 2010-2015. In 12 other counties, prescriptions were stable. (No information was available for 15 counties.)
In 18 counties, however, opioid prescriptions increased during the same five-year period. This included a cluster of nine contiguous counties in far eastern Oklahoma.
The CDC said Pittsburg County in the southeast had the highest amount of opioids prescribed in Oklahoma in 2015. And according to state Health Department data, it also had the seventh-highest rate of opioid overdose deaths.
Nationally, the CDC reported, the overall amount of opioids prescribed fell by 18 percent from 2010 to 2015. That is a welcome development indeed.
The annual prescribing rate by physicians dropped from 81 opioid prescriptions per 100 people in 2010 to 71 prescriptions per 100 people in 2015. That’s a difference of 13 percent. And during this five-year time frame, the number of high-dose prescriptions dropped by 41 percent, from 11.4 per 100 people to 6.7 per 100 people.
Yet researchers at the CDC also noted that not all the news was positive. For example, the length of prescriptions grew from an average of 13 days in 2006 to 18 days in 2015. And, the number of opioids prescribed by doctors is three times greater than in it was in 1999 and far outstrips the number prescribed in Europe.
The CDC’s acting director, Anne Schuchat, said too many Americans are still getting opioid prescriptions at too high a dose and for too long. That’s trouble, because taking these painkillers in high doses for extended stretches increases the likelihood a person will become addicted.
Oklahoma, which has seen more than 2,600 opioidrelated deaths in the past three years, is fighting this epidemic on several fronts. A 2015 law required doctors to occasionally check the state’s online prescription database before prescribing opioids, an effort to reduce “doctor shopping” by drug abusers. The state has implemented opioid prescribing guidelines for physicians that largely mirror the CDC’s guidelines. Public health workers have traveled the state to help the public and doctors learn more about the risks associated with opioids.
Attorney General Mike Hunter is forming a special commission, approved by the Legislature, to try to drive down the number of opioid-related deaths in Oklahoma. Hunter recently filed charges against a doctor who is alleged to have been operating a “pill mill.” He also is suing several pharmaceutical companies, saying they greatly understated the risks of addiction to opioid painkillers and overstated their treatment benefits.
This “all of the above” approach is important, because while the CDC report indicates slight gains have been made in Oklahoma, many, many more are needed.